


how you are like the rain

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2742095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Dean/Cas inspired poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  **how you are like the rain**

  

> When you smile the lines around your eyes crinkle like rivers.  
>  I can hear their trickling among your mirth,  
>  seldom visited little tributaries flowing into pools of green  
>  I should like to swim in them, I think  
>  I should like to swim in them and know  
>  the texture of those rivers. What forgotten happy places,  
>  where the spring water overflows and the sweet smell  
>  of ochre earth on your banks bursts through my senses  
>  and I can’t help  
>  but smile back.
> 
>   
>  You think you are like fire, burning badly from  
>  already charred wood, but I have to tell you  
>  how you are really  
>  like the rain.  
>  Only the rain could have found me here,  
>  under the creaking canopy of my own mistakes  
>  only the rain, as it seeps through the sopping leaves above,  
>  can pierce my skin in such a way  
>  that soothes as much as aches.
> 
>   
>  The first time we met it was in the middle of a storm.  
>  I thought it was of god’s making, but now I think  
>  it was always you.  
>  You, whose soul shudders like thunder, and  
>  whose static struck me as I was flying;  
>  it was the best lesson in flight I ever knew  
>  because it taught me the form of the ground  
>  where I could stand up  
>  and stand next to you.
> 
>   
>  I have to tell you how you are like the rain,  
>  and how I want to soak you up, and sink into your rivers  
>  with all the singing smiles of your forgotten lives, finally returned  
>  to your smoothly crevassed face.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

**gardens**

 

_for anon_

 

> When we were sitting in the garden last night  
>  with weeds and wildflowers sprouting up defiantly around us,  
>  where the dusk-light danced across your face  
>  and you looked young at last after all these years  
>  finally reposed in this quiet green place  
>  I leaned in close to your side  
>  about to tell you something;
> 
>  
> 
> I would have said how I wanted to give you  
>  the sunsets like these of a thousand places, how I  
>  would yearn to take your hand, and take you  
>  across the sea, where  
>  I would give you the massive peaks of mountains  
>  and oceans made of sand, and among ancient mastabas in the desert  
>  I would spread my arms as wings and tell you  
>  my love is as vast as this neverending stretch of land.
> 
>  
> 
> I leaned in close to tell you  
>  but I smiled into your mouth  
>  and decided to show you instead.


	3. Chapter 3

**to build by**

 

> If I had to use the word belonging,  
> I’d rather say  _ _belonging with__ than __belonging to__ ,  
> it makes love sound so much more like a home, don’t you think?  
> it makes this sound like something shared, or that if  
> we get caught outside beneath heavy clouds  
> at least we will get drenched together.
> 
>  
> 
> so when I say, whispering into your neck,  
> I knew all along you were mine, I’m saying  
> I still don’t know.  
> I’m saying my doubt comes in shudders and in terrifying storms  
> but then I perceive the curve of your mouth and the lines of your hands  
> intersecting with mine, and I think  
> I still don’t know anything.  
> I’m saying all I know is that the hammer in my heart when my eyes  
> meet yours is an unfathomable but unmistakable journey into a knowledge  
> that as much as you have gifted yourself as mine  
> I have been yours,  
> I am yours,  
> I will be yours,  
> I am saying, here, at the crest of our connecting fingertips,  
> our roof keeps out the rain.


	4. Chapter 4

**that which we call**

 

> my name is unimportant but i like it when you say it.
> 
> i like the shape of your mouth with the sound of my name,  
> the lines of your lips and the glint of your teeth and the way  
> my lips fit with yours as you say my name again.
> 
> i like the sound of my name in the shape of your mouth,  
> the coiling syllables of a whisper or the brashness of a laugh,  
> i like the way its rhythm blends with yours and hums  
> its way through your throat as your eyes dance in tandem and  
> my heart dances with them
> 
> i like the way my chest tenses and i like  
> the way my chest eases when  
> you say my name again.


	5. Chapter 5

**a secret i don't want to keep**

 

> you never ask me the right questions.  
> I can't tell if it's because you don't want to know or because  
> you're too afraid to ask.   
> but you've never asked me, for instance, my favourite colour  
> if you had, I would have answered,
> 
>  
> 
> brown, because it's never anyone's favourite.
> 
>  
> 
> brown, because it's the colour of the forests of my childhood,  
> that memory of comfort and of other fleeting things,  
> of soft earth and soft hands and timber before it's charred.
> 
>  
> 
> brown because it's the colour of your hair that I want to run my hands through,  
> and maybe I want  
> that promise of comfort again.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**clauses**

 

> “I hate to talk about endings,” you said  
> “I'd rather talk about  
> beginnings,”  
>   
> 
> 
> but I think they are the same thing.  
> I think we could be both,  
> I think you start something in me as you end others,  
>   
> 
> 
> but if you insist, I will tell you how together  
> we are a comma  
> or a semi-colon  
> and I was never one for rules or grammar as a child  
> I hope our run-on sentence  
> never stops
> 
>  


	7. Chapter 7

**vaults**

 

> i can picture you at the point of a pointed arch,  
> laid out on the ceiling like a constellation  
> of painted stars.  
> my heart leaps through the apses and volleys  
> of the aisles you encompass  
> and my voice echoes your name  
> up into your sky.


	8. Chapter 8

**a selfish wish**

 

> i want you to imagine me holding your hand.   
> i want you to picture us on a couch   
> reading, your feet propped up  
> on my thighs. i want you to imagine my fingers in your hair,   
> my smile against your scalp, ghosting across your cheek,   
> my breath near your ear, saying “i love you” loudly  
> because it is no secret.  
>   
> 
> 
> i want you to imagine us   
> tired, frightened, but together,   
> arguing over petty things, serious things,   
> the stuff of life and death that love is made of.   
> imagine us apologising after, crying after,  
> curling up after, with my palms   
> lain across your hips, where i hold you close to my heart   
> because its pounding only settles   
> when it can hear the beating of your own.  
>   
> 
> 
> if i could, i would give you the memory of all these moments  
> we've never had.  
> i would give you my smiles and my graceless mistakes,  
> all my follies and worries because i would crave every one of yours  
> in the same way i crave your grins, the way the skin   
> around your eyes crinkles, the way you turn  
> mundane syllables into a song.  
>   
> 
> 
> if i could, i would build you a home with these bare hands   
> that wish they could miss your touch.


	9. Chapter 9

**houses**

 

> i read your face like a map to find my way back to you.  
> i have yet to find my way through its lines and creases,  
> tracing the dotted trails of freckles lining the bridge of your nose  
> in hope they yield secrets, but  
> i am getting there.  
>   
> 
> 
> i have found other things. for instance,   
> the precise curve of your smile, and the texture  
> of your mouth as it presses to mine  
> the way your eyes fall when you're tired or stricken, the way  
> you lick your lips when your pulse quickens.  
> i have seen the faces of a thousand lives  
> caked in the dirt that paves your skin.  
>   
> 
> 
> so i trace your face like a map so i can find you  
> you, who's soul sleeps beneath those creases  
> housed in a holy home of flawed flesh  
> and brittle bone. but yet—the journey is not so arduous,  
> and as my thumb settles in to rest  
> on the dip of your chin, i cannot help  
> but marvel at your masonry.  
>   
> 
> 
> i have seen your soul once, trembling  
> bear, beneath my arms, but i think i might see it again  
> soon, seeped to the surface and emblazoned  
> in your eyes, and after all of my wandering i'll find  
> your face is not a map, but a door  
> that you might open, and through which  
> invite me inside.


	10. Chapter 10

**thunder-beats**

 

> the sky stays cracked open for days with dry lightning,  
> ripping the horizon in half as the heavens shatter, but  
> there is no thunder.  
> the clouds are too shocked to speak.  
>   
> 
> 
> there is a thunder inside me, though, grounded in my heart  
> that beats pitifully with borrowed blood. the sound echoes  
> in my ears, through the trees of unnamed forests, and  
> for a terrifying moment, i feel unnamed, too  
> untethered to the world that i was born of, bereft of  
> suffixed syllables that speak of where i've been.  
>   
> 
> 
> yet still find myself fallen onto feet that can take the weight of me,  
> and maybe lightning leads my way again because there was also  
> a storm of my own making on the first night i set foot upon this soil.  
>   
> 
> 
> so when i arrive again, wearied, at your door,  
> i'll touch your skin and a shock will run through me,  
> and your voice, a rich, raucous tenor that rattles through  
> my body and makes the silence of the sky not seem  
> so quiet. yours is a music my new soul will hum as you speak  
> my new name on your lips and the clouds will finally cry with relief.  
>   
> 
> 
> the air is humid and heavy with the promise of better weather  
> that will come again by morning.  
> if the weather works in cycles, maybe  
> we do, too.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**in transit**

 

> We are not flightless.  
> It has taken me time enough to come to terms with this,  
> worried that the roots of all the trees around me will grow up  
> like vines and swallow me whole into their trunks, but I think  
> there are just different kinds of flying.  
> Humans have expressions for this. There are flights of fear  
> and flights of fancy, and both can reach our nerves to  
> incredible altitudes, but in different directions.  
> Maybe falling then, is a kind of flying, too.  
>   
> 
> 
> But for instance, I can sit in a car going eighty miles per hour with  
> the window down and my arm outstretched, and though the  
> exhilaration is different—it flows through my blood and not webs  
> of wavelengths—it is there all the same, pulsing, carrying me  
> down straight stretches of tarmac and through undulations  
> of mountains. The wind in my hair is different than the  
> galaxy in my feathers, but my fingers are not muted to the flow  
> of air beneath my fingertips, and when I unfold my hands across  
> your back like wings at night, new heights are reached yet again.  
>   
> 
> 
> I am bound for different places than before, and gravity tugs  
> a little harder, but my muscles will adjust. They will scream when  
> I run at top speed up the next hill the distance, and my hands,  
> now calloused with use, won't fail to grasp you as we climb.  
> I had wings once, but I think these hands too are built for flight.


	12. Chapter 12

**weeds & wildflowers**

 

> we are a wild, rugged garden, sprouted up  
> despite ourselves, i think. but we are at no loss for it  
> being unplanned, for weeds have their own sort  
> of beauty, untamed as they are,  
> for _wild_ , in a way, is a synonym for _free_.  
>   
> 
> 
> the bullrushes stand tall by the marsh still,  
> where we caught ourselves once, and nearly sunk.  
> there is a red-winged blackbird that lives there,  
> but fear not, the crimson streaks across its feathers  
> are not from our blood. no, what we drained  
> went back into the earth, and all our past decay  
> gave food to a future in which  
> the land is not parched for pleasure, nor bereft  
> of the spring bloom. our fallow field has been turned over,  
> and our muscles, aching from the work, may lay down  
> in those green blades of grass growing now, and rest.  
>   
> 
> 
> in the evening, i will give you a bouquet of dandelions, saying how  
> their inky acid petals imitate the way  
> my skin is also stained yellow by your sun. their stems,  
> the colour of your eyes. my hands, dirty and dusted, of your hair.  
> my heart stutters out the sounds that spell the colour of your smile, and  
> it's my lips that find yours here, among our bed of weeds and wildflowers,  
> growing proudly in the fresh, crisp air.


	13. Chapter 13

**from Castiel to Dean, written into skin**

 

> There is something of a paradox in you. For contrary  
> to the faults of human perception, black is not a colour;  
> it is simply the _absence_ of light.  
> But you are not absent.  
>   
> 
> 
> You are _there_ , still, though you might not believe it,  
> threaded throughout your tired bones and twisting  
> behind weary eyes, you are still there, my friend,  
> and I have to tell you how, though you might not believe it,  
> exhaustion is such a terribly human thing.  
>   
> 
> 
> I am tired, too. I am old and drawn and fallen, a far cry  
> from where and who I've been. But I do not regret the path  
> that led me here, as treacherous as it became,  
> as endless and frightening as it seemed once, when at points,  
> where the canopies above me were so thick and sinister,  
> I could no longer see the light of day.  
>   
> 
> 
> But you were a beacon.  
> Even if I could not _see_ , I could _hear_ , I could feel you,  
> your soul brimming like the fresh promise of spring.  
> And so I have to tell you how, the richest earth  
> is always the blackest, that dark ochre colour  
> that will stain clothes and fingers in a second, and _smells,_  
>  always smells, thick and pungent, like renewal, like  
> the way I know your eyes will flicker back to green.  
>   
> 
> 
> And so, as we hibernate here, in this hole in the ground where  
> you've hidden, afraid that rejection awaits in the world  
> beyond its doors, that in the gleam of the sky above it  
> you will find an endless stretch of mirror, and recoil at what you see,  
> please remember how, when this winter is over again, when  
> the ground around you thaws and the rivers in the valleys  
> overflow the thirsty banks with spring, I will still be with you.  
> I will still be here to watch the seeds of hope take root in your black,  
> deep earth, and I will be here when you sprout out of the winter,  
> to watch you bloom.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**colour theory**

 

> there is a law that states  
> that certain colours  
> when placed together,  
> appear brighter than before.  
> their chemical make-up on the  
> canvas doesn't change, of course,  
> just the way we see them,  
> all by virtue  
> of the contact.  
>   
> 
> 
> i like to think sometimes  
> that we are like this, too.  
> i imagine us as Voice of Fire.  
> me, the big red stripe, and you,  
> the blue-purple buffeting me  
> on either side, containing  
> my explosion, keeping me  
> secure,  
> safe.  
>   
> 
> 
> i don't think there are any laws  
> that govern us,  
> but I do think we are like colours.  
> and that together,  
> we burn brighter than apart.


End file.
